It took Yoshitomo Tsutsugo a few years to realize his potential, and now the left-handed hitting slugger wants other Japanese to learn that baseball is as much about joy and heart as practice and discipline.
A year after playing 10 games of winter ball in the Dominican Republic, the 25-year-old Yokohama BayStars and Samurai Japan cleanup hitter spent much of this past offseason with his childhood club, the Sakai Big Boys.
"When I saw the way little kids are taught to play in the Dominican and in America, I realized it was completely different than how it is in Japan," he told Kyodo News in a February interview in Okinawa. "If Japanese kids don't win, someone gets angry. You just can't grow your game in circumstances where whatever you do someone gets angry. I think that's when some possible superstars have that potential crushed.